Finally a busy evening at the apirary

Well if you missed today's session then you have missed a busy evening which will try and summarize below.

Will start with last Sunday the 9th May,  Queen rearing hive, we put the queen into the jenter cage to lay the eggs, this was hive 6, the grand mother hive, to do this we first had to find the queen and  mark and clip her because bad planning it had not been done.  Then on Monday 10th may, the queen was released, and the eggs left to develop until Thusday 13th May. On Wednesday 12th  on hive 8 was some fiddling with the cloke boards and entrances to make them think the queen has gone away and get most bees into the top box.

Now to this evening, well it really was busy so in summary, we

1. checked all the hives
2. took 3 splits, using the method of removing the queen on the hive along with two frames of brood and either one or two shakes of bees according to how strong the hive was and putting the nuc on the top of the original hive..... bit more to it than this but you just have to be there to see it done.
3. a couple of hives were fed, and I discovered a hidden gem in hive 15 which has 10 seems of bees and now we have added a supper.
4. Queen rearing, the jenter cage was removed from hive six, and Lee and Val used the caravan to select the smallest lava with the most royal jelly. Due to the strength of the queen raising colony it was decided that only 10 queen cells would be attempted. These where then put on to a frame, as per images.    The hair roller is to come more on that next week.

To Come next week.

• We still have the shook swarm to do into the langstroth  from hive 5, and then distribute the brood.
• Possible another shook swarm into the rose hive, mainly because hive 3? have quire a bit of chalk brood.
• Maybe another split
• Checking the split colonies to make sure we leave only one or two nice queen cells.
• Clean boxes for most hives...
• We have much more planned but I don't think there will be time...

Also on Saturday we have our annual Bee Safari; I won't be able to attend but will see if I can get a report for you.  I am off to a  Queen rearing course for the day, which will be fun.  Well that it for this week.